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Gender sourcing pattern of Ari Shapiro during Election 2012.

In an infographic that the 4th Estate Project released last June, we showed how there was a dramatic difference in the sourcing patterns of the media as far as journalists quoting men versus women in their stories. We were monitoring the coverage of the GOP primary and the General Election between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

As that graphic demonstrated, this even applied to so called ‘women issues’ such as abortion, planned parenthood or contraception. In that graphic, NPR was slightly better than the average with a ratio approaching 68% men to 23% women (with the rest being statements from organizations and similarly non-gender entities) whereas the overall numbers were closer to 80% men to 15% women. We continued to monitor through the election in November and for two weeks of post-election debriefing coverage. Overall, across the longer time frame (November 2011 to November 2012), the numbers did not change much for the global media landscape. Men continued to be sourced more than women at a 3-1 ratio.

When we analyzed NPR coverage in more depth, an interesting pattern emerged. First off, the overall ratio for NPR stayed relatively the same from June 2012 to November 2012. But when we dug into the data more closely we found that there was a huge discrepancy in the sourcing patterns between men and women journalists at NPR. This discrepancy remained even if we filtered out all the statements from candidates (which were represented almost exclusively by men – Michele Bachmann being the lone woman candidate).

Gender sourcing of Mara Liasson during Election 2012.

While men NPR journalists quoted men 80% of the time and women 20% of the time, women NPR journalists quoted men 52% of the time and women 48% of the time. This is a dramatic difference, and suggests that NPR women journalists are doing their part in trying to change the culture of sourcing in new stories. Interestingly, NPR women journalists stand out in this regard as compared to their counterparts in print or broadcast. We did not see the same discrepancy when looking at the sourcing patterns of men and women journalists working in either print or broadcast. In both of those mediums, the discrepancy in gender sourcing was more consistent across men and women journalists. The difference in NPR coverage by men and women journalists is nicely encapsulated in the sourcing patterns of Ari Shapiro and Mara Liasson, who produced the largest number of quotes for their NPR stories. The charts to the right demonstrate their representative sourcing patterns - the chart for Ari Shapiro is on the top while the chart for Mara Liasson is on the bottom. Both charts have statements and quotes from candidates filtered out from the data. When candidate statements are included in the data, the gender ratio for Mara Liasson shifts to 57% men versus 40% women while the ratio for Ari Shapiro changes to 81% men versus 14% women.